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Delisle had access to sensitive information, including the locations of ocean sensors that help authorities monitor ship movements. That type of information could be useful to a country, such as Russia, if it wanted to try to navigate waters without being detected, he said.

Media reports have suggested that Delisle was leaking information to the Russians.

Shebarshin's Afghan years convinced him of the futility of any occupation of that unruly, martial land and revealed the depth of the cooked intelligence that launched the Red Army's intervention and doggedly supported the failed military adventure for nine long years.
Even better is the tale of the crashed SU-25, which has a quirky end:

The Pakistanis, on America's behalf, made the colonel the usual offer: a condo in Phoenix, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, a good dog, and a good life.
______

Canadian naval intelligence officer has pleaded guilty to spying for Russia over four-and-a-half years, Steven Chase and Jane Taber of The Globe and Mail report.

Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Delisle, 41, pleaded guilty to criminal charges of “communicating with a foreign entity” and "breach of trust" for funneling top military secrets from his post at the ultra-secure Trinity naval intelligence center in Halifax to Russia for about $3,000 a month.

Feds arrested 11 suspected Russian spies on charges of smuggling $50 million in sensitive American military electronics to Russia.

Alexander Fishenko, an owner and executive of American and Russian companies, was charged with operating as an "unregistered agent of the Russian government inside the United States by illegally procuring the high-tech microelectronics on behalf of the Russian government," according to an FBI press release.

An additional blow came in July 2000, when the US House passed the Russian-American Trust and Cooperation Act, a bill that would ban Washington from rescheduling or forgiving any Russian debt to the US, unless the facility in Lourdes is shut down.

Moscow did so in 2001 and also closed its military base in Vietnam’s Cam Ranh, with both moves reported as major steps to address Americans’ concerns. But, in the words of a military source cited by Kommersant, the US “did not appreciate our gesture of goodwill.”

Alexander Litvinenko: the man who solved his own murder

An interesting account of this Russian FSB defector's death; the sub-title says:

This week, the inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko will deliver its findings. The former Russian spy was poisoned with a cup of tea in a London hotel. Working with Scotland Yard detectives, as he lay dying, he traced the lethal substance to a former comrade in the Russian secret service

Sanctioning the GRU, a decent step, but hamstrung by the need forSymmetryby Mark Galeotti

The "Lame Duck" president has proven to have a surprisingly sharp and accurate peck, and as the USA strikes back against the Russian hacking and its role in the US elections with a welcome series of sanctions. Two point are worth bringing up: the way the issue instantly and depressingly becomes a partisan one.

It also suggests that the incoming administration is woefully ill-informed about the Russian intelligence community, or willing to leap through rhetorical hoops to protect it; and the needless and limiting philosophy behind the sanctions.

If by "the GRU doesn't really travel here," she means senior officers such as the four figures directly sanctioned don't pop over to Epcot for family holidays, that is perfectly true. If by "the GRU ..., doesn't keep its assets here" she means the agency as a whole doesn't have McMansions in Texas and skiing chalets in Vermont, also technically true.

But.
First of all, the GRU has many assets in the espionage tradecraft terms in the USA: agents, networks, safehouses, dead drops, etc. This is an expansive and aggressive agency that while focusing on military intelligence has broadened out into covering a wide range of other missions, not least because of the competitive dynamic I outline in my recent ECFR report#Putin's Hydra.

So if we are talking about the GRU as a whole -- and Conway's phrasing suggests she was -- then of course the GRU has huge (even yuge) assets in the States, including its#rezidentura, its base within the embassy in DC.

Secondly, the point about sanctioning the guys at the top of the GRU is not because you're worried about them popping over the take advantage of the New Year sales on Fifth Avenue, but to demonstrate commitment. Yes, this is "symbolic" but much of politics is precisely about symbolism.
Punish the Criminal, Not the Instrument

However, here's my beef with the current philosophy of sanctions, the need artificially to create comparability and demonstrate direct connection. What does it matter if the hacks were done by the GRU (and as I understand it, they got the emails, but it was the FSB that pushed for their leakage and handled the dissemination and exploitation side of the operation)?

These are simply arms of a single, authoritarian state?

Why not hit people in the Presidential Administration, Duma, Senate, Putin's friends, his dogwalker, whoever?
When we convict a thug of punching someone, we don't punish him#by breaking his#arm, we punish the criminal as an entire person. By the same token, sanctions should target the state, not its individual instruments.

This is a reasonable set of sanctions, and can be welcomed. But for real effectiveness, for deterrent impact, arguably sanctions ought to be unreasonable, and directed at the source of the attack, not the instrument.

Last edited by davidbfpo; 12-31-2016 at 02:01 PM.
Reason: Moved from the Ukraine thread

I post this due simply to the fact that this journalist has broken correct and verified stories on the FISA warrant that was initially issued in the Russian connection investigations...

She is now building on the reporting being released in Europe from seven different European Intel services concerning Trump and Russian activities largely driven by the former head of MI6 who is highly respected in Europe for his level analysis...

The extremely interesting point is that all of this intelligence was passed to the FBI long before the actual US election and no action was undertaken by the FBI....it seems they were totally oblivious to Russian influence and hacking operations that were ongoing and still are ongong...

Sources linked to the intelligence community say that General Mike Flynn’s trips to Cambridge and across Europe will form a key part of Donald#Trump’s impeachment and the prosecutions of dozens of his associates.
According to several sources within the intelligence community, Michael Flynn was co-ordinating, with and for Russian agents, the drafting of messages that Vladimir Putin was using to attack democracy in not only the United States, but across Europe. Furthermore, Flynn was doing this with the full knowledge of the Trump campaign, including Donald Trump himself.
This news#directly relates to the data laundering performed by the Alfa Bank server on behalf of Donald Trump and Russia, where, as I reported, the Trump campaign colluded with the hacking of both the DNC and state voter databases.
The Alfa Bank server ‘washed’ that data together to tell Trump where to target it, sources say. But the messages and content#with which#targets were served was co-ordinated with Russia by General Flynn.
Furthermore, Flynn took the same hacking tools and artificial intelligence coded in Russia and helped far-right and Nazi parties across Europe use it in their own nations. Intelligence sources assert that multiple NATO partners have evidence of this and that it has been provided to the FBI.
If ‘data laundering’ is the first part of the Trump Russia incontrovertible evidence, ‘propaganda targeting’ is the second part. Flynn attacked not only the United States but all her Western allies on Russia’s behalf, with the full knowledge and connivance of Donald Trump.
Both halves of the social media impeachment will, sources assert, be key to Director Comey’s overall case. This is the ‘incontrovertible evidence’ to which Sir Richard Dearlove and others have referred.
Explaining Data Laundering and Fake News
The broad case of Russia’s hacking the US election can be divided into two relatively simple spheres. There is another branch of the criminal investigation that focuses on money-laundering and corrupt payments from Russia and Russian satellites to Mr. Trump and to his allies. But the actual hacking of the US election follows a relatively simple narrative line in two halves; hacking and targeting. Mr. Flynn’s activities spanned the two and link them to Russian active measures all across Europe, including the current attack on the French election.
As I previously reported in an exclusive story on this blog, the Trump server at Cendyn was communicating to Alfa Bank in Russia hacked data from state voter databases and the DNC’s own voter targeting engine, Vertica. The precise combination of these two databases allowed Cambridge Analytica and SCL both to create Russian-directed propaganda and target it at voting groups with extraordinary precision. Intelligence sources now tell me that SVB bank, the second bank named in the FISA warrant I exclusively reported on Nov 7th, was also involved in messaging Alfa Bank. There will be further explanation of that in another post.

By naming and shaming you make both CI points and get PR....AND you effectively tell SVR/FSB that you have them in clear gun sights on every move they make....

The old style days of kicking out "suspected KGB Embassy officers" and vice versa was the 70/80s...this is a modern 21st century approach to the same process....

Do not think for a moment that those 35 Russian kicked out of the US recently were not somehow misidentified by the FBI.....

It's PR not secret intelligence. I suppose it's a way to make up for years of Russia's soft power and the fact that it took a Russian invasion of Ukraine to scare Estonia into meeting its defense commitments to NATO.

Last edited by davidbfpo; 04-17-2017 at 08:08 AM.
Reason: Moved from Russian Disinformation thread as it fits here!

It's PR not secret intelligence. I suppose it's a way to make up for years of Russia's soft power and the fact that it took a Russian invasion of Ukraine to scare Estonia into meeting its defense commitments to NATO.

Simply put it is an embarrassment for the mighty FSB/SVR to have one of theirs outed in the media...and the long raining costs are lost forever as that agent is burned and cannot be used anywhere else in the world...

Main rule in spying to do not get caught in the first place...

Last edited by davidbfpo; 04-17-2017 at 08:08 AM.
Reason: Moved from Russian Disinformation thread as it fits here!